Business Process Modeling

                  Business Process Modeling 

What is Business Process Modeling? 

- Business Process Modeling is the activity of  representing processes of an enterprise, so that the  current processes may be analyzed and improved in  future. 

- It is typically performed by business analysts and managers who are seeking to improve process  efficiency and quality.

Modeling Levels Level 1 

– Descriptive BPMN - Limits the palette to basic working set of shapes and symbols readily  understood by business person and supported by almost all BPMN  tools. 

- The Level 1 method starts from a blank sheet of paper and provides a  basic framework for structuring the process  model. 

What starts and ends it? 
What does the instance represent? 
What are the basic steps in the so called “happy path”? 
Besides the happy path end state, what are the important exception and states of the  process?



Level 2 – Analytical BPMN 

- Draws on the full panel of BPMN shapes and symbols, but  the method emphasizes the diagram elements most  commonly used. 

- It picks up where level 1 method leaves off. The primary  emphasis is on the events and exception handling,  matching each type of event or exception to a specific  pattern in the diagram.



Level 3 – Executable BPMN 

- Deals with the XML Language underneath the shapes. - Brand-new in BPMN 2.0



Getting started with BPMN elements  

- The simple diagrams that BPMN consists of to represent the business workflow prove to be helpful for both business users and developers. 

- The four basic categories of BPMN elements are as follows: 

1. Swim lanes  
2. Flow objects 
3. Connecting objects 
4. Artifacts 


1. Swim Lanes 

Swim lanes are just used for visualization purposes. With the help of swim lanes, one can easily organize the activities of a business. Swim lanes are represented using two objects: the lane and the pool. 

POOLS 

-Pools represent a process or a primary participant who carry the process in an interactive  (B2B) Business Process Diagram. 

-A pool may be a Black Box or a  White Box (containing a  process). 

-Interaction between pools is handled through Message Flow.

LANES

- Lanes represent  participants/sub participants  for the objects within a Pool. 

- They often represent  organization roles (e.g.  manager), but can represent  any desired process  characteristic - Sequence flow can cross lane boundaries.

2. Flow Objects 

Flow objects consist of various shapes that represent the core elements of business process representation, which characterize the behavior of a business process. To represent the flow of the object, three elements are used: activities, events and gateways. 

Activities 

Activities represent the tasks or work that is being performed within a business process. 

The shape that represents the ac vi es in a BPMN is a round-cornered rectangle. 

There are various types of activities, such as task, Sub-Process.

 Tasks 

- A task activity is used in a business process when there is an activity to be implemented within a process. It is represented by a round-cornered rectangle. 

- Tasks can be used when there are some actions to be performed in your business process. Various types of tasks are provided by BPMN, such as the script task, user task, service task, and mail task.

- Script/Send task: This task is used for the automation of a task. We can have our logic implemented here. 

- User task: This task can be used in a business process when human interaction is required for the business, for example, when details are to be filled or verified by a human. 

- Mail/Receive task: This is a type of service task that has services implemented to send e-mails or notifications from the process. 

- Service task: This refers to a custom task in which you want some specific operations to be done. Similar to the mail task, which is a type of service task that is used to send e-mails from the process, we have a custom service written for the process.

 Sub-Process  

When capturing complex business processes, the resulting process model may be too large to be understood at once. To improve its readability, we can simplify the process by hiding certain parts within a sub-process. In order to use a sub-process, we first need to identify groups of related activities .

A Sub-Process is a task that is used to represent levels within our business process. This task is useful when we want to display the leveled diagram of a business process. A Sub-Process will be represented as follows .

- Once we have identified the boundaries of the sub

-processes, we can simplify the model by hiding the content of its sub-processes. 

- We indicate that this activity hides a sub

-process by marking it with a small square with a plus sign (+) inside. 

- This operation is called collapsing a sub-process.

 

Events

 Events can be considered as the actions that occur during the business process. They are represented using a circle in a business process diagram. An intermediate event is represented using concentric circles. There are three types of events: start, intermediate, and end. 




Start Events 

 Message Start Event 
           - Process started by receiving a message. 
           - Name as the condition of having received the message.      

              E.g. Letter Received 

Timer Start Events 
          - Process started at a specific time (wait for a specific event to trigger or recurring events). 
         - Name as the condition of the moment    occurring. E.g. 3pm, 1 week

End Events 

End Event (None) 
          - Current process tread ends 
          - Name after the condition describing the final process state 

                   E.g. Leave approved, Application Rejected 

Message End Events 
        - Process ends by sending a message 
        - Name after the condition of having sent the message 

                  E.g. Goods Dispatched, Notice Sent 





Terminate End Events 
     -All process treads end



 

Error End Events 
     - Indicates that a named Error should be generated. 
     - All currently active threads of the Process are terminated.

3. Connecting Objects

To represent a basic framework of a business process structure, connecting objects are required. Each ow object can be connected using the connecting objects. These connecting objects can be represented using the following types: sequence flow, message flow, and association. 



- A Sequence Flow is used to show the order  that activities will be performed in a  process 
            - Models sequence of activities 
            - No name required or allowed 

- A Message Flow is used to show the flow  of messages between two entities that are  prepared to send and receive     them. 
            - Models exchange of information between processes (pools) - Name After the data entity in the message. Eg:  Application Letter, Leave approval decision. 

- An Association is used to associate data,  information and artifacts with flow objects

4. Artifacts

Artifacts are used to provide additional information in BPMN diagrams so that the use of the notation within the business process can be stated clearly and is understood by others. There are two types of artifacts: data object and annotation. 

Example: Basic Order Process

Example: Order Process with Exception Paths

Example: Order Process in Swim lanes